Sonnettics

At 2 a.m. obscurity arrives
to frost my winter windows when I sigh.
It comes to mock the hope which still survives
in distant summers where the sparrows fly.
A brevity of rain at 2:01
descends to earth, like passion drawn to sin.
The night regrets the absence of the sun
when cold obscurity has settled in.
A songless voice compels my soul to sing.
No, that’s a lie.  Forget that; it’s a lie.
The voice is not compulsion; it’s a sting.
I choose my own response. I choose to cry.
And now I wonder what it was I heard.
Can beauty be so easily obscured?

The splinters of my joy are buried deep
within the swollen flesh around my heart,
whose pulse contains the strength I need to keep
the painful shards from cutting it apart.
My blood congeals; the pressure is intense.
To breathe, it seems, might cause me to explode
into a shock of splintered recompense,
in payment for a debt I never owed.
Success today!  I managed to extract
the smallest piece of all my wooden joy,
the closest to my heart to be exact,
the one I thought most likely to destroy
my soul, and now I hold it in my hand,
and now I know this isn’t what I’d planned.

We stand on fertile ground with seeds in hand.
The constant sun continues day to day.
The rain has promised moisture to the land,
and still we hold our seeds in some delay.
We’ve harvested these fertile fields before;
our oldest legends speak of our success.
From meagre means we’ve managed something more
than simple sustenance and fruitfulness.
Dominion of the earth compels our pride
to godly heights above this fruitful field.
We hesitate because we must decide
today how much this goodly earth can yield.
And if our choice is wrong, we fail and die.
Are seeds of wisdom in such short supply?

I spend my time erasing similes,
which fail to mark the depth of what I feel.
I feel as gray as graphite in its pleas
for words of color, words which might reveal
how far beyond the whiteness of the page
my blood might raise the hue of what I write.
Each simile erased conceals the rage
of passion unexpressed, my inner fight.
I fight myself, my feelings, word for word.
I justify the purpose of my song,
when all I want is simply to be heard
by anyone who cares to sing along.
At times I press so hard the pencil breaks
like every simile my mind forsakes.

Don’t read this if you don’t intend to call,
or write, or email; you know what I mean.
Unless you don’t, unless you think that all
a poet needs is words. Don’t be obscene.
I need a muse, my last one went insane,
a thing my muses seem inclined to do
while wandering around within my brain,
my heart, my soul—she knew. Of course she knew.
You may insist, like her, that you’re the one,
who knows the inner workings of my heart.
You should be willing (she was not) to shun
the urge to go insane when we’re apart.
Profess your love, if that is what you choose,
but I must write, and so I need a muse.

The clouds that under-sweep the moon are burned
by frozen nothingness that coats the air
with quiet blue ferocity, discerned
by freezing eyes turned up in doubtful prayer,
through bitter glass, in semi-warm embrace
with life, or what will pass as life.  The lie
is not within the clouds where shadows trace
the moon.  The bitterness is blue, but why
would anybody pray to what’s above,
beyond, and further than the distant reach
of what can be perceived?  Perception of
a thing is more than faith; it is the breach
of darkness where the faithful burn too soon
while watching clouds that under-sweep the moon.

Some squirrels have burrowed in to get the seeds
from rotting pumpkins buried in the mass
of carrot peels, and onion skins, and leaves,
and countless mower-bags of summer’s grass.
Compressed within a frame of chicken wire,
a heap of rotting vegetable decay
is simmering in metamorphic fire
and decomposing further every day.
Inside, the worms of god’s creative spark
fulfill the great creator’s purpose too:
consuming waste and defecating dark
and fertile soil, unlike me and you.
The best that we can do is pile the shit
and in the spring make ready use of it.